flower photo tips

Happy Monday!

Today, I thought I'd share some pretty flower photos and photo tips with you.  I love flowers, and never tire of their beauty.  

The kids and I went to a nearby demonstration garden, the Gardens at Spring Creek shortly after school got out.  

It was a cloudy and rainy day, which made for great light to shoot flowers in.

When shooting flowers, I like to try to play around a lot with the angles I'm using.  In the shot below, I got down pretty low so that I was level with the flowers, and tried to get some interesting colors in the background since I  knew I wanted to isolate the flower stalk in the foreground.  It helped that they were planted in a lifted planter.  By shooting wide open (the largest aperture available), I was able to capture blurs of pretty color all around the flower.  

f/2.8,  1/160, ISO 100

For this one, I shot down on a single bloom, making sure the parts of the flower closest to me were in focus.  The wide open aperture (f/2.8 on my lens)  creates a nice blurry background of green shapes.

1/250, f/2.8, ISO 100

On this shot, I knew I wanted some blur both in front and in back of the area in focus.  So, I made sure there were flowers in front of my focal point.  I chose an aperture that was not quite wide open, but a bit smaller (the aperture closes down or gets smaller as the number gets larger.)  This way, more flowers would be in focus.

1/250, f/4.5, ISO160

I used the same idea on this one and shot down rather than from the side.  

1/250, f/4.5, ISO160

Here's another side-angle shot, getting a bit closer in this time.  On this one, I didn't want any flowers in front of my focal point, so I just focused on the flowers directly in front of me, creating a lot of blur in the background.  This photo is not in super-sharp focus, but I still like it.  I think it gives it a moody and heavy feeling.   

1/250, f/4.5, ISO160

sparklers: painting with light {photo tips}

Happy Independence Day!

Hooray for the 4th of July!

Watermelon, parades and sparklers.

These are the things I love about this day.

And, of course, capturing fireworks.

Here are some favorite photos from our last 4th of July in Orlando.

It's hard to believe we've been in Colorado for nearly a year!

There are many ways and settings to capture fireworks.

I like to start with an ISO of 200, and play with my settings based on available light.

For these shots, my goal was to capture the light painted by sparklers.

I mounted my camera on a tripod, and since it was pitch black, I left the shutter open for 2sec. 

I asked my kids to make various shapes in the air with their sparklers, tracing them over and over again, as if they were painting with light in mid-air.

Voila!

Shapes of light!

f/5, 2s, ISO 200 

f/8, 2s, ISO 200

In the shot above, I'm focusing on Mr. Z who is standing still making circles with his sparkler, while one of my girls ran through the shot, creating a stream of slightly unfocused light.

f/5, 2s, ISO 200

This took several takes to get the spacing just right.  Plus, we had quite a few backwards "S's" until we figured out how to do mirror image letters :)

f/5, 2s, ISO 200

Tips:

mount camera on tripod

shoot in manual mode and focus on the light

experiment with moving into and out of the frame

play with speed of movement (slow movements result in brighter lines)

HappyPainting!

bokeh how-to

It's New Year's Eve Day, and I'm finally posting a Christmas-y photo. Better late than never, I say. Besides getting everyone's fun photos in the mail, another reason I love Christmas is for capturing the lights. This year I didn't get out much, but I did enjoy my own little tree at home.

If you tree is still up, you can try this too. Bokeh is the background blur in an image. It's a made from tiny bits of light that are out-of-focus. In my Christmas tree photo, the bokeh became the subject of my photo. You'll want to shoot at a wide aperture. In the photo below, I used my Tamron 28-75mm at f/2.8, the widest or most open aperture available. Switch to manual focus so that you're actually turning the focusing right yourself, and play around until you get an effect that you like.

It takes just a little practice, but it's a fun effect. Have fun! And, Happy New Year's Eve!